Halley on Christmas Break
by xenon3000
Summary: This story is told from the point of view of Howard and Bernadette's daughter Halley. Halley wants to get her mother a Christmas gift without her father's help.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: "The Big Bang Theory" belongs to Warner Brothers.**

Fifteen year-old Halley Wolowitz could not wait to get home. It was the beginning of Christmas vacation, and Halley did not have very much homework to do. For a good chunk of the next two weeks, Halley would have the house to herself.

Having the house to herself would give her quite a bit of freedom. Halley had no problem being at school. School was a nice escape for her compared to being at home. Her father was easy to deal with. Her mother, on the other hand, was another story. Halley did not want her mother on her case if she could avoid it. She would complain whenever Halley got a grade less than 90 percent. Also, Halley was not allowed to date boys until she earned her high school diploma.

But the worst part about dealing with her mother was the fact that her mother was more competitive and aggressive than Halley could ever hope to be. Halley often believed she would be a complete disappointment to her mother for the rest of her life.

After eating dinner with her parents, Halley got out a spiral notebook and began planning what she wanted to do over the next few weeks, coming up with the following items:

1\. Get Mom a Christmas gift. (She already bought one for Dad.)

2\. Increase my typing speed to 100 words per minute.

3\. Binge-play Jeopardy on the Xbox Four until I can beat the 74-game winning streak of Ken Jennings.

4\. Build the biggest and most profitable amusement park in Planet Coaster 3.0.

5\. Learn one or more new magic tricks.

She did not want to get her mother the same ordinary gifts her dad selected and paid for. She wanted to get her mother something amazing, something that would completely surprise and enthrall her.

And she wanted to do it without her father's help. Surprising two people at once would be better than surprsing just Mom. Besides, she had the resources. She had some money saved up from various jobs she had over the past two years.

But what would truly please Mom?

How do you please the unpleasable?

 **This is only the beginning.**


	2. Chapter 2

The weekend came and went. Now it was Monday. Time to hit the stores.

She went to a jewelry store and looked at all the necklaces. She went to a second. And then a third. No luck. Her mother already had a cross necklace, and she could not find anything better.

Off to Best Buy. All the books were about things that Bernadette already knew about. None of the CDs would fit the bill either. But going to Best Buy was not a total waste of time. She decided to get an extra gift for her father, a DVD collection of NASA documentaries.

Maybe something more scientific would be the answer. So she went to Aldi and bought a pulse oximeter. Maybe her mother could find a use for it at the pharmaceutical company she worked for.

At that point, Halley decided to head home.

She wrapped the gifts.

She increased her typing speed to 70 words per minute.

She won 12 Jeopardy games in a row on the Xbox Four, with cash winnings of $314,159. If only that money were money she could spend in the real world. Better than most, but still 62 games behind Ken Jennings.

At that point, she went into her room, laid on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She wondered why she had to be an only child. She was the one egg in her mother's and father's basket. If only her mother's second pregnancy had not ended in a miscarriage. It would be interesting to have a younger brother or sister. Also, it would make things easier on her because she would not always be the center of her parents' attention.

No, scratch that. Having her father's attention was fine with her. It was her mother's attention that she wanted to avoid. She thought back to when she finished eighth grade and announced she had graduated sixth in her class.

"Nobody cares who came in sixth," her mother scolded.

"Not even you?" her father objected, to no avail.

So Halley was still not satisfied with the gift she had obtained for her mother. Her academic abilities would never be good enough for her to earn a Ph.D. And she was not attractive enough to accomplish anything based on her looks. Nothing she did would ever be as good as what her mother did.

Unless Halley could give her mother a gift to top all gifts, one that she would cherish for the rest of her life and beyond the grave, the present of the millennium, Halley feared her mother would never truly appreciate or respect her.

But was there truly such a gift for such a person?

Halley hoped there was.

She only had four days left to find it...

 **There is more to come. Please stay tuned...**


	3. Chapter 3

Finally, Christmas Day arrived.

After posing for multiple photos, it was time to open gifts. Halley got to open her gifts first. She got an iPad 21 with a 6 terahertz CPU, 3 terabytes of RAM, and a 2 petabyte holographic storage drive. It also came with a detachable keyboard, a pen with an integrated color wheel (so you could change colors as you drew), and cameras in the front and back that could record normal, infrared, terahertz and ultraviolet in 8K at up to 1,000,000 frames per second.

"This is the best Christmas gift I ever got! Thank you to the thousandth power!" Halley exclaimed.

"I hope I can say the same for whatever I get," Bernadette remarked.

Then it was Howard's turn. When he opened the DVD collection of NASA documentaries, he stated "I was at NASA for years and I had no idea these movies existed."

Bernadette came last. When she opened her pulse odometer, she said, "Thanks. An electronic gadget that can tell me something I don't need to know and something I can figure out just by putting my fingers against my carotid artery."

Halley clenched her teeth to keep from saying anything. There was still one more gift for her mother to open.

Her mother opened.

It was a portable ultrasound scanner.

What Bernadette said next shocked Halley beyond belief.

Bernadette smiled an unnaturally large smile and squealed, "Wow! I have NEVER gotten such as an amazing gift! This is the right gift at the right time!"

"W-what do you mean?" Halley asked, startled by how genuinely happy her mother was.

Bernadette answered, "I did a test this morning and I was going to tell you after dinner, but I'll tell you now...I...am...pregnant!"

Howard and Halley cheered. Halley cheered louder. Not only had she finally succeeded in pleasing her mother on a holiday, she also had a younger brother or sister to look forward to. She would have someone else who she could easily relate to. Someone who might possess talents she lacked. Someone who would be a true companion.

This truly was a Merry Christmas.

 **The End. I hope you enjoyed it.**


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